"It's one that could go all the way to the Supreme Court,"
says Atlanta lawyer Kenneth S. Canfield, one of a team of Alabama, Georgia
and California lawyers for the federal plaintiffs.

Both cases are class actions and deal with farmers' antitrust claims
against American Cyanamid Co. The farmers claim the company conspired
to fix prices when they offered bonuses to herbicide dealers for selling
Cyanamid products at or above wholesale prices.

American Cyanamid officials denied their sales program was anti competitive
and last year won a dismissal of the federal case, which was brought by
Doug Lowell and four other farmers in Mobile, Ala.

But while the federal case was on appeal at the 11th Circuit, Cyanamid
and lawyers for James E. Fox and other Tennessee plaintiffs hammered out
an agreement settling their case. The deal resolved all state and federal
claims for $5.2 million, with a third going to the plaintiffs' lawyers.

In April, lawyers from the federal case went to Union City, Tenn., to
ask Obion County Chancery Court Judge W. Michael Maloan to postpone approving
the settlement until the 11th Circuit ruled in the federal case.

If revived by the 11th circuit, they argued, the federal case was worth
at least $100 million, given six years' of alleged price-fixing and
treble damages awarded in antitrust cases.

"The Lowell plaintiffs suspect, although American Cyanamid would
never admit it, that American Cyanamid settled with the Fox plaintiffs
because it fears that the 11th Circuit will rule against it,. the federal
plaintiffs wrote in briefs.

Cyanamid responded that it expected a victory in the 11th Circuit, but
even if it lost, the Tennessee Court of Appeals could review the fairness
of the deal. In the meantime, Maloan should approve the settlement so
that payments could be made, the company wrote.

On June 2, Maloan did just that, approving the settlement as "fair,
reasonable and adequate."

A week later, an 11th Circuit panel of Judges J.L. Edmonson, Susan H.
Black and, sitting by designation, Judge Jane A. Restani of the US. Court
of International Trade, ruled for the farmers.

Writing for the panel, Edmonson ruled the farmers were not indirect purchasers,
who are barred from making antitrust claims under the Supreme Court's
Illinois Brick case. Instead, he wrote, the plaintiffs were "direct
purchasers from a conspiring party." Lowell v. American Cyanamid
Co., No. 98-6194 (11th Cir. June 9, 1999).

While Edmonson wrote the decision "makes no new law," others disagree.

Knoxville, Tenn., attorney Gordon Ball, a lawyer for the Tennessee plaintiffs,
is among them.

"I think it changes things," he says of the 11th Circuit decision,
certainly in his case.

Ball said he originally thought Illinois Brick barred claims by indirect
purchasers in federal courts, so he didn't think the federal plaintiffs'
case was worth very much, if anything. That's why he had no trouble
including their claims in the Tennessee settlement, he says.

CHANGE SOUGHT IN SETTLEMENT

Now that the 11th Circuit-which officially interprets law only in Alabama,
Georgia and Florida-has ruled Illinois Brick does not apply in the Cyanamid
cases, Ball says he'll tell Maloan the settlement "needs to be
re-examined."

That's what the federal plaintiffs lawyers did June 11 in an emergency
motion to reconsider the settlement approval, according to John T. Crowder
of Mobile's Cunningham, Bounds, Yance, Crowder & Brown.

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